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An apple. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What makes Apple Apple? More to the investor's point, would it be possible to extract those qualities and apply them to a screen of other companies and find the "next" Apple? It's worth doing. JPMorgan's equity research team gave this a try in a report out today focused on tech, telecom and media sectors. Their conclusion was that no company is really like Apple when it comes to the overall mix of qualitative and quantitative factors that makes Apple such a winner: customer loyalty, strong market position, decent valuation, product appeal, potential to accelerate cash returns, low institutional ownership and revenue and earnings growth opportunities. But the JPMorgan team did find fifteen companies in a half-dozen TMT sectors that are worth considering as "little Apples."

The companies most like Apple on qualitative scores such as customer loyalty, reputational excellence and exposure to lifestyle products were Broadcom, Intuit, Disney, Accenture and NetApp. The companies most like Apple on quantitative scores such as revenue and earnings growth, research investment, valuation and institutional ownership are Qualcomm and Broadcom (again), Cree Systems, VMWare, Comcast and NetApp (again). JPMorgan wanted to get a sense of how much revenue growth these little-Apples have ahead of them, so it mapped those companies' revenue amounts to a revenue chart for Apple since its IPO (a bit of voodoo, this). None were at "early Apple" stage, but Cree, Tibco, Trimble, QLIK and LinkedIn were found to be at "middle Apple" stage, suggesting some room to run, if you buy this notion. Companies such as Accenture, Disney, Amazon, Intuit and VMWare are at their "late Apple" period. Not much room to run for them.

Is Amazon, subject of FORBES' latest cover story, that much of an Apple? It did the impossible for an online retailer and nailed customer loyalty as well as Apple has. Its reputation is solid but JPMorgan doesn't anticipate that Amazon will deliver major capital returns compared with Apple. Disney scores very well on the Apple matrix for loyalty, reputation, culture of success and potential to return cash to shareholders. Its capex is peaking now, indicating an accelerated return of cash to shareholders in coming years, likely through buybacks.

Tech consultancy Accenture, which no one heretofore would have considered an Apple-like company, ends up scoring very well on loyalty (more than 100 of its clients contribute $100 million+ in annual revenue), culture of success and potential to accelerate cash to shareholders ($3 billion in intended buybacks and dividends this year with a dividend up 220% over the last 3 years). Broadcom, the semiconductor design firm, also matches up well on the Apple scale in customer loyalty, reputational excellence, success culture and exposure to lifestyle products, but not as well on revenue and earnings growth (2010-2012).